


The Lion and the Lamb

by shealynn88



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-03
Updated: 2012-09-03
Packaged: 2017-11-13 11:59:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A new Grimm needs allies, but Marie has learned the hard way never to allow anyone close enough to become collateral damage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion and the Lamb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [withoutmaps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/withoutmaps/gifts).



> This story has been completely Jossed at this point, but it was written last year, before we knew anything about Marie's history. Hopefully it can be enjoyed as an AU. 
> 
> Enjoy!

It all comes at once. Too much – her brother's death, her nephew's life, and a heaping load of responsibility in the form of visions and books and keys that make her think she's crazy. And then convince her she's not...which is worse.

The truth of it means that she and Nick are always in danger, and that Tom will never understand, and that he's safer far, far away from the two of them. Grimms work alone for a reason. 

Every time she thinks it should be another way, she only has to think of Nick's mother. Collateral damage. She won't do what her brother did. She won't bring someone else into this. The thought of watching Tom die because she's too slow, or not there...just because her family is part of a long line of freaks...it's not acceptable.

She pulls away and lets him hate her, because it's easier than trying to explain. It assures his safety.

She signs the divorce papers without reading them, but she keeps the name because it's the only thing of his she can have without putting him in danger.

A month later she gets what will be her first scar.

Her parents had insisted on martial arts for both of them. Alexander had kept it up, but she hadn't. So she's a little rusty when a feisty little dwarf tries to take her out on the way to the grocery store. His face is twisted and his gait is half-dance, and if she'd read more of the books she'd have simply called him by his Name and that would have been that...but she doesn't know, then, and she has to do it the hard way. She chokes him with her flashlight after he stabs her with his tiny, wicked knife. She leaves him behind a bush, binds her wound with a scarf, and cleans her blood from the scene as well as she can.

She makes her way to the hospital slowly and carefully, forcing herself to stay alert despite the blood loss, and prays to whatever creature or diety might be listening that she makes it home to get Nick to school in the morning. The last thing that boy needs is to lose someone else. He's only just started to act like a kid again.

A young nurse is outside, smoking, leaning his head against the brick and breathing out the smoke in rings. She moves forward slowly, looking for cameras. She can't afford to be seen. After all, she's just killed someone.

She lures the nurse by making a pitiful noise and then collapsing beyond the perimeter of the cameras...and it's less an act than she'd like.

He rushes over and bends to take her pulse, and she presses the edge of her pocket knife against his throat. “I don't want to hurt you,” she says softly. “But I need your help, and I can't go in there.”

His face changes for a second, just a flash of fur and ears and big incisors before he's human again, and she's suddenly afraid that she's made a terrible mistake – there will be nothing on the cameras to show her death, and he's probably far more adept at hiding bodies than she.

She tries to thrust her blade home, but the blood loss catches up with her, and he catches her hand.

She wonders if Alexander felt this way when he knew he was going to die – furious, and frightened, and guilty for leaving so much behind. _Nick, I'm sorry_ , she thinks before she blacks out.

***

She wakes in a single bed in a room decorated with flowers – on the wallpaper, growing on the windowsill, carved intricately in the head and foot board. Her side is bound and, though painful, no longer life-threatening.

It's still dark and she struggles out of bed, looking for her clothes. There's still time to get home before Nick wakes up. There are a million questions – where she is and how she got there and what it means...but all of that can wait..

“Easy, there,” comes a voice from the door. “I'm guessing you're new to this?”

She automatically covers herself up, though she knows perfectly well that he's the one who must have patched her up. “What makes you say that?” she asks. It's more to buy time than anything else.

“You tried to kill me like I was a _Blutbad_ or something.” He chuckles, but he looks more sad than amused. “I don't suppose the _Hasenkind_ are worth putting in your books. We're no danger to you Grimms.”

“Grimms.” It's not a question. She's still buying time but he's helped her, and she's not stupid enough to think that she can do this indefinitely by herself. He could help. If he's not one of them. One of the bad ones. “Who are you?” she asks instead.

And he tells her.

***

It takes over a year for her to trust him, and then it's really because she has no choice and he's had any number of chances to kill her. She's got new scars every week, most of them woven back together in his small cottage, his careful fingers wielding needle holders and scissors with a level of skill she envies.

“We have thin skin,” he tells her. “Human skin is much easier to work with.” His eyes go black as he concentrates; his ears lengthen and sprout fur, and he doesn't seem to mind. She hardly notices anymore – the hare attributes are clear to her now. It's obvious that he isn't a monster in the fairy tale world. The _Hasenkind_ are prey, and it makes a sad sort of sense that he would be in medicine. So many of his kind must need it.

“What do you know about _Jagerbars_?” she asks.

He becomes a confidant over time, because there's no one else. If there are other Grimms, as her brother's books claim, they stay far away from Portland. He's the only one who knows what she's up against.

He jumps a _Hexenbeast_ in the park, keeping the fight more or less even – two for Marie, one for him. She knows it's against every instinct he has, and that scares her.

They both need some fixing up after that one, and Marie learns to wield a needle as well as her kukri. He guides her hands and talks her through it between gasps of pains.

They each get a shot of penicillin, and then they have a glass of wine and sit by his fireplace.

“Marie, I have never known anyone like you.”

She laughs. “Yeah, us Grimms are a little off, aren't we?”

He looks at her, his eyes are black. Serious. “That is not what I mean.”

She's seen it coming. She's waited, and wanted, and hoped, and dreaded. “Rem...”

“Please, Marie.” His licks his lips nervously, and reaches for her hand. She lets him take it because she knows she can't allow anything more. No matter what she wants.

“I...” he seems reluctant now, and part of her hopes he won't say it. That they can stay like this for another five years. Ten. Forever. This is something she can accept. Anything more...he's already more involved than he should be, just by sewing her up like a crazy quilt.

But he goes on gamely. “I've never found someone. No one...no one like me to...to have my _kinder_. To share my life. It is...very unusual.”

She forced herself not to turn her hand to hold his. “You have been very important to me, Rem.”

He looks up at her, hopefully, and she curses herself. It wasn't what she meant. It's nothing she can act on.

“Be with me, Marie.”

She starts to pull away, but he holds her hand. “Hear me out. I have been here. I will be here. Tomorrow. Next week. I will sew your wounds and listen to your pain and help you where I can. I will take as much or as little as you will give. But I cannot lie. I hope it is more. I can't imagine being without you.”

He kisses her, and that, she knows, is highly unusual for _Hasenkind_. They're followers. Prey. They don't fight, and they don't take chances, and they don't make the first move. 

But he has. For her, he has.

She closes her eyes when his lips meet hers, and she pulls as much of his warmth from him as she can, memorizes the feel of his hands, lingering on her cheek, against her palm, wound through her fingers. Because this is all they can have, and she knows it, and she has to be strong for them both, because that is what Grimms have that _Hasenkind_ don't. The difference between predator and prey. 

He has honesty and love, and she has conviction and pain, and that has to be enough.

“I'm sorry,” she says, pulling away. “I can't.”

She feels his sad, black eyes on her back as she leaves, but she forces herself not to turn back.

As a Grimm, she will keep him safe. Him. Nick. Tom. All those nameless people in Portland who have no idea what lives among them.

This is the blessing, the curse of the Grimms - 

The strength to be alone.


End file.
